The Walking Dead

An ongoing TV series about a zombie apocalypse and its survivors? HAS THIS EVER BEEN DONE BEFORE?

GTFO, Dead Set was basically a serialised film.

Based on the crazy-popular long-running comic book by Robert Kirkman, Frank Darabont (director of The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile & The Mist) will be showrunner, but Dalek can correct me if I'm wrong there.

NSFW:

The Walking Dead was greenlit for a six-episode first season by AMC, to start airing in October.

To put it in perspective, the first season is only expected to cover the first arc (i.e. 5 or 6 issues, as I remember). The comic book series recently passed its 50th issue. I imagine they'll diverge from some storylines, or just streamline them; no one wants 9 seasons.

To UK viewers like myself -- FX now have the first-run rights to The Walking Dead, and it'll actually air this year!

This kinda broad window isn't so broad, since if it's starting in October in North America, then it could only be November or December for us; and FX have intimated that it's a part of their autumn schedule, soooooo:

NOVEMBER AT LATEST. YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

lmao, i knew it was a milestone! is it worth reading the next issue? i'm not sure if i should wait a while, after how the last one ended.

also, who IS the showrunner, if not Darabont?

Actually, I was mistaken. Darabont is. Which is amazing and, aside from Kirkman's excellent source material, the main reason this show can't fail.

I think the ONLY thing that can deter this from being successful is to bill it too heavily as a "zombie" show. I already have told my friend about it and he said "Zombies? That's so corny. I'm not watching that shit."

They need to make sure they promote it as a character-driven drama that happens to have zombies in it. Fans of the comic are going to watch it. Fans of zombies are going to watch it. It's the regular people they have to reel in.

That's a hard sell. You'd have to have one strand of ads be about the zombies and how great and slow they are, and then another about the destruction they leave behind, and the people who have to deal with it, and the heart of the show. Kinda like how Lost didn't really start out as a fantasy show, but hooked people on its character-driven stuff.

I reckon once people see footage, they'll wanna watch it. If only for the rarity of such a TV show.

A little bird close to THE WALKING DEAD production just told us that MICHELLE MACLAREN (who was a producer on THE X FILES TV show and even directed an episode) will be directing an episode of the TV series from a script by genre King Shit Frank Darabont (she has also done a handful of episodes of Breaking Bad so it seems that AMC is keeping it in house so far). Now take this news with a grain of salt as we have yet to confirm it, but it sounds legit to me.

This is shaping up to be a fantastic series. I just hope it gets the ratings to continue running.